Ep.9: Prioritizing Yourself Isn’t Selfish
So I had this thought today, what's the difference between being a selfish asshole and putting yourself at the center of your life, making yourself a priority?
Because I can definitely think of people who make themselves a priority at the detriment of others. Those people are thoughtless and inconsiderate and trample on the toes of others and make them want to retaliate. I don't want you to be that person, but you know what I do want for you and for me I want you to stop sacrificing and sacrificing and sacrificing. Stop putting everyone else's needs ahead of your own.
Are you exhausted and overwhelmed? Do you feel taken for granted? Are people taking advantage of your kindness and good nature? Are you resentful about it? I find that when I am angry at someone else, it's generally because I have not had good boundaries for myself. So here are three tools that I want to give you that will help you make yourself a priority, but you won't be a selfish dick.
First, in order to prioritize yourself without being a jerk to someone else, you need to set time aside for you. Now you can make whatever plans you want to, but every day, every day, you deserve to have something for you.
I recommend that you go to my website and you download my ebook of journal prompts. I have been using those very same journal prompts every day for years. It's a gift to myself. It's an opportunity to be introspective, to learn more about me, to clear my head, to get in and examine my fears, and you'll have an opportunity to recognize what you're grateful, for, which most spiritual practices, as well as positive psychology, focus on to help your well-being. Take some time to brag about yourself and celebrate your assets. What's good about you, what have you accomplished?
Write affirmations that counter those fears that you wrote down, and visualize the greatest possible life that you could ever have. That ebook also includes some breath work and some mindful meditation, but that is one thing, one way that you can spend time with yourself. Make yourself a priority. Set aside time that doesn't belong to anyone else. The next thing I want you to do to prioritize yourself is to say no. What does that mean Dawn? Not just to be contrary and contradictory, but to actually practice taking up space.
Saying no is a revolutionary act. You have been saying yes, you have been sacrificing yourself, you have been shrinking. I want you to say no.
Here are some examples:
You can say no, thank you.
You can say I don't have time for that, Perhaps tomorrow, not today.
Or just tell them that you're practicing saying no. I'm gonna say no to this because I'm practicing.
Or you have another commitment, and maybe that commitment is just to yourself.
You can make up reasons for saying no. You don't have to give an excuse at all. No is a complete sentence. I promise you, just by practicing saying no every day, you're going to prioritize yourself. You're going to take up more space, you're going to feel more empowered and it will feel good at first. It might be awkward at first. You're not in the habit of doing it. You might feel mean or selfish, but you're not.
The third tool I want to encourage you to use to prioritize yourself is to identify your feelings. So many of us only know happy, sad, angry. That's a really limited description of the whole palette of feelings that we have as human beings. The Gottman Institute, which is, you know, the Gottmans are these amazing relationship psychologists the Gottman Institute has created a feelings wheel that you can download from the internet and it will help you identify more precise feelings. It'll help you to talk about I'm feeling frustrated or overwhelmed, or scared. I'm feeling exhilarated, joyful, hopeful. You can also feel multiple feelings at the same time. That is emotional intelligence knowing how you are feeling and being able to talk about it.
Download the Gottman Institute Feeling Wheel Here
Some of us go our whole lives running from feelings. We just want to be happy, we just want to be fine, we just want everything to be okay. That's not real.
When you prioritize yourself and your feelings and you stop and you identify them and you look inward and notice how they rest inside your body, what your somatic, your body experience is, that'll help you identify those feelings again in the future. When you do that, you increase your feelings competency. It helps you to look inward and notice yourself rather than looking outward and determining how other people feel and trying to take care of their feelings.
This whole process of journaling and saying no and identifying your feelings it's not going to happen overnight and it might be messy, it might feel awkward, but the better you get at doing that, the more it will empower you, it will transform you, it will make you feel like a whole human being and you're not a selfish dick for doing it. I congratulate you for listening this far, because I believe that you're going to give it a try. Let me know how it goes. I believe in you.